Before I always thought that old age would come unnoticed, that one day I would just wake up and realize that I was 68, retired, a widow, the mother of a grown son, and all of this was normal. My life will be quiet and measured like many elderly people in Horn Lake, the small town where I’ve lived most of my life. I’ll read books, go out with girlfriends, maybe get a cat or two, and no one, no one would look at me like I was a porcelain figurine, ready to crumble at the slightest touch.
Everything changed. One April day last year, I was working in the garden, pruning rose bushes, when suddenly the world swam around me and my right hand refused to obey. I remember looking at the pruning shears clenched in my palm and couldn’t understand why my fingers wouldn’t unclench.
And then a neighbor found me, called an ambulance, and my life was divided into before and after. MicroStroke. Two words the doctor said with such relief, as if he were telling me I’d won the lottery.
You’re lucky, Mrs. Trembley. We made it in time.
Your recovery will be complete. But you need to take care of yourself. Take care of myself.
Had I known that phrase would become a chain reaction curse, I would have asked the doctor to never ever to say it in front of my son, Randy. Randall Trembley, my only son, has always been an imaginative child. As a child, he was afraid of everything, the dark, loud noises, strangers.
James, my late husband, worried that the boy would grow up to be a coward, but I saw his caution as a sign of sensitivity. Now looking back, I realize it wasn’t sensitivity, but fear of losing control. And over the years, that fear only grew stronger.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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